O4-5 A gamification-based intervention to encourage active travel

Abstract Background There are enormous economic, human, and environmental costs of inactivity, climate change, air pollution and congestion and active travel can help reduce and prevent these. In England, however, only 26% of all trips are made by walking and only 2% are made by cycling. Walking and cycling contribute just 4% of total distance travelled. ?Beat the Street' is a community-wide intervention which aims to increase active travel by turning an area into a 6-week game. Residents earn points and prizes by walking and cycling and tapping a smartcard on RFID readers called ?Beat Boxes' placed on lampposts at half-mile intervals. To-date, over 1 million people have taken part in the intervention, however, the impact of the program on adult active travel is yet to be explored. Methods In Autumn 2019, Beat the Street was delivered throughout the London Borough of Hounslow. Prior, and immediately following the intervention, residents were invited to complete a self-report questionnaire (Sport England Active Lives Survey-SF) to assess changes in physical activity. Time-stamp data generated through Beat Box activity provided an objective measure of intervention engagement and a traffic survey camera was used to measure the number of cars travelling along 1 target road between 1-week pre- and 1-week post-intervention. Data were analysed using a series of ANOVAs and McNemar tests. Results 28,219 people took part in the six-week game, of which 56% were female. Between pre- and post-intervention there was 7% decrease in adults reporting less than 30mins of activity per week and a 13% rise in adults reporting 150+ mins (n = 346, p > 0.01). Beat box data ascertained that 25% of total taps at all Beat Boxes were made between 08:00-08:59am and a further 28% were made between 3:00-3:59pm, typical travel to school/work periods. Further, traffic camera data showed that between the week before and week following Beat the Street, 1199 and 705 fewer cars and 130 and 36 fewer vans were observed travelling along Cambridge Road between 07:00-09:30am and 2:00-4:30pm, respectively. Conclusions These data sources, in combination, suggest gamification may be an encouraging approach to increasing levels of active travel at a community-wide level.


Introduction
Regular physical activity (PA) is associated to a decrease in morbidity and mortality and to a better quality of life. The environment has been shown as an important factor in the adoption of an active lifestyle, especially among the elderly, since it may be the difference between a dependent or independent living and a better health status. Thus, the purpose of this study was to analyze the relation between the PA level and the environment perception of the elderly from a city in southern Brazil.

Methods
Three neighborhoods of the city of Santa Maria, RS -Brazil were drawn to be part of the investigation, with low, medium and high socioeconomic levels. The sample had 202 subjects. An adapted version of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire for the Brazilian elderly (Mazo & Benedetti, 2010) was used to evaluate PA level and a Portuguese version of the Neighborhood Environmental Walkability Scale (Salvador et al, 2009) to evaluate environment perception. The statistical analyses were done by relative and absolute frequencies and logistic regression.

Results
The prevalence of adequate PA levels was inferior to 30% in the three studied neighborhoods and the average of minutes spent with PA per week was 63.14 (AE115.15). From the 41 variables considered in the environment perception, four had a p > 0.20 being selected for the multiple logistic regression model. The presences of fair and pedestrian crosswalks near home were the most influent factors on PA: the presence of fair increases 3.3 times the chance of the elderly being physically active and the crosswalks increase 2.7 times that chance. Conclusion A low prevalence of physically active elderly was observed in Santa Maria, which was also shown in other studies with similar samples. The variables that most positively influenced Abstract citation ID: ckac094.029 O4-5 A gamification-based intervention to encourage active travel

Background
There are enormous economic, human, and environmental costs of inactivity, climate change, air pollution and congestion and active travel can help reduce and prevent these. In England, however, only 26% of all trips are made by walking and only 2% are made by cycling. Walking and cycling contribute just 4% of total distance travelled. ?Beat the Street' is a community-wide intervention which aims to increase active travel by turning an area into a 6-week game. Residents earn points and prizes by walking and cycling and tapping a smartcard on RFID readers called ?Beat Boxes' placed on lampposts at half-mile intervals. To-date, over 1 million people have taken part in the intervention, however, the impact of the program on adult active travel is yet to be explored.

Methods
In Autumn 2019, Beat the Street was delivered throughout the London Borough of Hounslow. Prior, and immediately following the intervention, residents were invited to complete a self-report questionnaire (Sport England Active Lives Survey-SF) to assess changes in physical activity. Time-stamp data generated through Beat Box activity provided an objective measure of intervention engagement and a traffic survey camera was used to measure the number of cars travelling along 1 target road between 1-week pre-and 1-week postintervention. Data were analysed using a series of ANOVAs and McNemar tests. Results 28,219 people took part in the six-week game, of which 56% were female. Between pre-and post-intervention there was 7% decrease in adults reporting less than 30mins of activity per week and a 13% rise in adults reporting 150+ mins (n = 346, p > 0.01). Beat box data ascertained that 25% of total taps at all Beat Boxes were made between 08:00-08:59am and a further 28% were made between 3:00-3:59pm, typical travel to school/ work periods. Further, traffic camera data showed that between the week before and week following Beat the Street, 1199 and 705 fewer cars and 130 and 36 fewer vans were observed travelling along Cambridge Road between 07:00-09:30am and 2:00-4:30pm, respectively. Conclusions These data sources, in combination, suggest gamification may be an encouraging approach to increasing levels of active travel at a community-wide level. Keywords: Gamification, Community-wide, Active Travel, Beat the Street, Technology Abstract citation ID: ckac094.030 O4-6 Citizen involvement and Active Living -a research project in the middle of Odense

Background
Physical inactivity and its consequences is a growing problem. Health enhancing physical activity (HEPA) behavior has previously been linked to the characteristics of the physical surroundings. Active Living (AL) is, in that connection, an international concept developed to integrate HEPA into everyday life. The city of Odense located on Funen in Denmark has undergone major urban developments throughout the past 10 years -and will continue to do so prospectively. This has resulted in a possibility to create an AL area to be used by various target groups (employees and students at the university, patients and relative at the hospital, athletes participating in sporting activities in different associations etc.). Therefore, the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) is involved in a project aiming at creating a 80-hectare AL area with various activity possibilities for the everyday users. Methods Citizen Science (CS) has been the bearing principle from the beginning of the project. Rather than developing such an area 'behind the desk', the guiding question throughout the process has been: According to the citizens, what should such area contain of? This has been initiated through expert workshops, student modules in relation to the Sports and Health education at SDU, arranging events together with local ii42 European Journal of Public Health, Volume 32 Supplement 2, 2022